Hank Pym as Ant-Man on a mission in Cuba? Sign us up.
It’s no secret that Ant-Man had some problems during development, namely that Edgar Wright dropped out as director due to creative differences after Marvel rewrote his script to Ant-Man. While we don’t know exactly how much of Wright’s draft made it up on screen, the film’s director Peyton Reed spoke of an alternate opening from the original draft that made was actually shot but ultimately cut from the film.
What happened in the opening?
In a recent interview with Cinema Blend, Reed broke down the original idea for the opening:
“It was basically a standalone sequence where you really did not see it was Hank Pym. He was retrieving some microfilm from this, originally Cuban general and then it became a Panamanian general… It really was designed in those early drafts to be almost like a Bond movie standalone scene in the beginning. It was going to show the powers. You never saw Ant-Man, it almost felt like an Invisible Man sequence, and it’s really, really cool… It started to feel tonally disconnected from the movie we were making and story-wise, and it also kind of set a standalone adventure, but it didn’t just connect to the rest of our story.”
Why was the scene cut?
We imagine that Marvel was pushing very heavily for the first scene to feature an older Peggy Carter and Howard Stark. Given the scene we saw in the final film, it would have made an awkward transition to go from Hank Pym’s Cuba mission to that moment in the S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters:
“We actually ended up shooting that sequence and cut it together and it’s fantastic, but the more we got into editing, it just felt too disconnected to the rest of the movie. It felt like vestige of those earlier drafts, which as a standalone thing was really cool. We actually talked at one point about releasing like a standalone, Hank Pym as Ant-Man. Who knows if that will still happen.”
How likely is it we’ll see it as a one shot?
The simple fact of the matter is that money was spent to shoot the sequence and cut it together. All they need to do is finish the special effects and they’ll have something very usable. Throw in a framing device with Michael Douglass and you have a perfectly fun short film ready to be thrown on blu-ray.
Could they really get Michael Douglass back for a One-Shot?
They got Ben Kingsley back for a short film along with Sam Rockwell, so we think it’s a definite possibility. At the end of the day, it comes down to if Marvel is willing to shell out a little cash to get the project completed.
